Once again a compendium of modern writing inspired by the characters and themes of H.P. Lovecraft. (I'm on a Mythos binge lately in case nobody's noticed.)

And once again a mixed bag of offerings. Of the twenty-one tales Caitlin Kiernan's Pickman's Other Model (1929) is easily the best of the lot, closely followed by Howling in the Dark by Darrell Schweitzer; and Tempting Providence by Jonathan Thomas.

Less successful (purely as Mythos-inspired tales) but still enjoyable are Ramsey Campbell's The Correspondence of Cameron Thaddeus Nash; and Passing Spirits by Sam Gafford.

Norman Partridge's Lesser Demons, a PA/Mythos mashup, didn't work for me at all. If you pulled out the one tiny allusion to the Mythos found in Lesser Demons, it would read just like any other 'PA narrated from a lone survivor perspective' yarn.

Another flop (IMO) was scifi master Brian Stableford's The Truth About Pickman. Not because it wasn't well written. (It was.) Not because it didn't have a good premise and a solid plot. (It did.) But despite all that, it still missed the boat because Mssr. Stableford makes the mistake far too many writers do when tackling a Lovecraft-type story: They explain fartoomuch!

The real joy of Lovecraft is how he leaves you with a sense of awe and mystery. And always wanting just a little more. Unexplained bumps in the night go largely unexplained. Mysterious texts are alluded to (sometimes even briefly quoted from) but never shown in full. And although Lovecraft may drop dots all over the landscape, he never explicitly connects them. Or gives his reader every dot to work with.

It's a subtle art - giving the reader just enough to go on - but not enough to completely work things out. And that sort of literary miracle working is Lovecraft's art and legacy. Modern horror writers could learn something here if they could just stop hoping for a movie deal long enough to write a good horror novel rather than something that's merely ok but can easily be adapted to film. Film is all about 'visual' whereas Lovecraft and the classic horror genre (as opposed to splatter-shock) is largely about things largely left unseen.

Good book overall. Worth a read if you're an H.P. fan. And the short story format is perfect for trips or when stuck at boring gatherings.

I don't know how much non-fiction is appreciated around here, but I'm just starting this...

Civilisation - Niall Ferguson

Winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize 2013 Niall Ferguson's Civilization: The Six Killer Apps of Western Power is a vital, brilliant look at the winning tools of power. In 1412, Europe was a miserable backwater ravaged by plague, bad sanitation and incessant war, while the Orient was home to dazzling civilizations. So how did the West come to dominate the Rest? In this vital, brilliant book, selected as a Daily Telegraph Book of the Year, Niall Ferguson reveals the 'killer applications' that did it: competition - How Europe's small, piratical states built modern capitalism; science - How innovation gave the West the military edge; property rights - How the laws of private property built the United States; medicine - How colonialism transformed the world's health; the consumer society - How shopping made the industrial revolution; and the work ethic - How Western religious ideas brought it all together. But has the West now lost its monopoly on these six things? Or is this the end of Western ascendancy? "A dazzling history of Western ideas ...epic". (Economist). "Vivid and fascinating". (Daily Telegraph). "Superb ...brings history alive ...dazzling".

Looks like Meg Russof's book How I Live Now, which I previously recommended here, is coming to the screen:

Be interesting to see how closely it follows the book - no that there's any reason why it can't. The movie Elizabeth looks a little healthier than I imagined the book character to be. (In the book, she doesn't care to eat beyond absolute necessity for two reasons: (1) it drives her parents crazy; (2) she "kinda likes" the sensation of feeling very hungry.)

It's a very literate and personal examination of the people, places and things in the middle ages that had a profound and lasting impact on the subsequent social and intellectual development of Western Europe. Chatty in places, and quite funny at times, it goes a long way towards helping people get some insight into the medieval mindset. Important because the people of that period's minds worked and interpreted their world very differently than the minds of today. In some respects, until you can get into their heads, very little of the Middle Ages makes much sense or appears very civilized. However, once you do get your head around where these people were coming from, and their reasons for doing things, you can then see the Middle Ages as an extremely sophisticated and vibrant culture. One that has a far greater continuing influence on our world than our modern weltanschauung's bias towards the Renaissance and The Enlightenment would care to admit.

Nicely illustrated with faux-illuminated chapter pages, maps, and famous artworks. And the superb typography and paper quality are an unexpected surprise in this era of expensive (albeit cheaply made) trade paperbacks.

Some examples here if anybody cares to see:

What books are you reading?What books are you reading?What books are you reading?

Just reread The Demolished Man (Alfred Bester)... it was shorter than I remembered. Next will be The Werewolf Principle (Clifford Simak) and then Neuromancer (William Gibson), and then the Ray Feist series that starts with Magician: Apprentice and runs through A Darkness At Sethanon.

(I had a hankering to reread Neuromancer, and stumbled across a box of oldies in the attic. Treasure -- it also contained some of my Dad's old Ace Doubles that me and my brothers found in his attic lo these many years ago!)

After these I'll start a Neal Stephenson series (Quicksilver is book 1)... I was looking for Snow Crash but found this instead.

I dunno. Even books that "repeat" stuff have value for me. Let's say you begin to suspect that it's like that ... then just skim it. Then you can just learn the few new nuances. Going sideways this is the true key to that old "Library vs Purchase" discussion - you borrow the Kurzweil book, make your ten pages of new notes, and then give it back. For a really good book, you buy it because you plan to want to look at it for a long time!

Valiant's past contribution to machine learning was a useful way of formalizing some guarantees about a class of "Probably, Approximately Correct (PAC)" algorithms. His attempt at branding that as a theory of intelligence falls painfully short.

I may not finish The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing -- there's a ton of great info in here, but he's extraordinarily long winded and repetitive and I'm starting to think I've gleaned all I'm gonna... as with your book there mouser, I feel like it could have been boiled down to a few pages. (Actually, it has. By the same author. )

Finally, I'm reading Ancillary Justice and it's a bit mind blowing. I haven't enjoyed a sci-fi book so much in a very long time.

Valiant's past contribution to machine learning was a useful way of formalizing some guarantees about a class of "Probably, Approximately Correct (PAC)" algorithms. His attempt at branding that as a theory of intelligence falls painfully short.

Intelligence is such a difficult thing to put your finger on. In a lot of ways I think I understand it better than most so-called experts, as if there really was such a thing. The problem is I can't really explain what I think I've figured out for the same reason I was able to figure it out - because it's so complex.

I learned to say the pledge of allegianceBefore they beat me bloody down at the stationThey haven't got a word out of me sinceI got a billion years probation- The MC5

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ''crackpot'' than the stigma of conformity.- Thomas J. Watson, Sr

It's not rocket surgery.- Me

I recommend reading through my Bio before responding to any of my posts. It could save both of us a lot of time and frustration.